Review: ALREADY PERFECT, King's Head Theatre

Haven’t we all wanted to have a chat with our inner child at some point? And what if the inner child is not quite as faultless and innocent as we may think?

In a plot strangely reminiscent of It’s A Wonderful Life, Tony-winning musical theatre performer Levi Kreis plays himself, manic in a Broadway dressing room before his latest show is filmed for posterity. As Levi descends into crystal meth relapse, he meets a ghostly younger version of himself, who is played with devil-may-care gregariousness by Killian Thomas Lefevre, and proceeds to walk him through where it all went wrong.

The autobiographical subject matter here is rich – Kreis was raised in rural Tennessee, endured six years of conversion therapy, was expelled from a Christian university and worked as an escort in LA. The title only begins to make sense near the end, as a mantra of accepting oneself even if one isn’t quite the finished product.

Richer still is the way this story is told: Kreis and director Dave Solomon never allow us to forget that we’re in a theatre. Every character seems aware that they’re playing a dramatised version of themselves, and props often drop from the ceiling when needed. Levi’s memories challenge and contradict his younger self (who goes by his birth name, Matthew), challenging the audience in turn to think about what aspects of their reality they choose to remember.

More often than not, though, the narrative feels stiffly chronological, and the occasional fourth wall break or unreliable narrator is a welcome relief from a rehashed queer coming-of-age story we’ve all seen before. It’s refreshing that Kreis does not let his younger self off the hook for his mistakes – Lefevre’s Matthew has an established tendency to put himself in dangerous situations – but the script is often too doused in sentimentality for this to have a lasting impact.

Meanwhile, the third player in this three-hander, Iffy Mizrahi as Levi’s addiction sponsor Ben, seems to mainly exist to play a host of stock characters in Levi’s memories: the narcissistic stage mother, the homophobic bully, the sexy pastor. An intriguing detail about Ben once having dealed crystal meth himself is mentioned too late, then abandoned.

There’s also the matter of the music. Kreis’s powerful, soul-infused vocals are on full display, a relic of his Southern childhood, but are put to use mostly in imitation 80s power ballads containing rhymes like “reality” and “f*ck with me”. Occasionally, Kreis’ songwriting does cut through the guff – ‘You Couldn’t Be That Proud of Me’ about his homophobic grandfather is one such moment – but given how much of the plot deals with Levi’s youthful ambitions as a singer and songwriter, the music really ought to be more consistently strong.

Levi Kreis is clearly unafraid of examining his own life, and the result is a bold ownership of his past and present, elegantly staged and acted. But in order to elevate Already Perfect above an extended therapy session, there needs to be more ambition pushing beyond the cliches.

Already Perfect plays at the King's Head Theatre until 15 February